Palimpsest (2013-2017)

Doris Salcedo, born in Bogotá in 1958, is a Colombian contemporary artist whose sculptures and installations give voice to marginalised and silenced lives. Her work transforms absence, loss, and memory into powerful, understated forms that provoke reflection and empathy.

Her installation Palimpsest (2013-2017) pays tribute to refugees and migrants who lost their lives crossing the Mediterranean and Atlantic. Covering 400 m² with 66 sand-colored stone slabs, it inscribes names in two cycles: pre-2010 victims embedded in sand, and 2011-2016 victims appearing as droplets of water that slowly fade, a metaphor for memory, loss, and erasure.

I find this installation profoundly moving: it is “flat” and grounded, yet monumental in its impact, even though it sits low to the earth rather than rising tall. Her work shows that remembrance can be simultaneously poetic, delicate, and deeply politically resonant.